WordProof: Digital truth for WordPress

Here at Europechain, we’re all about exciting partnerships. One of our business partners is developing an application called WordProof, and we’re beta-testing it on this site! This application is a plugin for WordPress that lets you time stamp any post to the blockchain. It’s a simple application that works perfectly and could have profound effects for online information.

Our screens are flooded with information that, though presented as journalism, often have a poor relationship to the facts. With WordProof, a writer can verify their work on the blockchain for everyone to see. You might think of it as digital version of a notary public. The implications for WordProof are pretty staggering! Any writer can prove they wrote their own work. How do you know you can trust a news source? With widespread use of WordProof, you could see a complete list of a single author’s work all across the web.

Here’s the verified record on the blockchain that I wrote this article:

The title and content are stored in the encrypted hash and the link to the post is noted in the memo. Think for a moment of some of the implications of this simple notary process. How can an author notarizing their work online change digital journalism? Well, for one thing it can end plagiarism! In this era it sometimes seems like a story breaks simultaneously from every direction, but using this tool, authors can prove that they wrote the first article on a given subject.

What about quotes? Can you think of a time when a someone claimed to be misquoted or had their words taken out of context? The person speaking can connect their account to an article via Wordproof and submit a verification to say that they were quoted correctly. Imagine an online magazine with the tagline: “Your source for digital truth.” Where every article and every source could be trusted and you, the reader, can explore all of the verifications for yourself. This is technology we desperately need, and it can help usher in a new era of digital truth in online journalism.

Have you ever seen a news story that featured an image which later turned out to be digitally manipulated? Here are two examples from recent years:

WordProof can fight fake images by allowing photographers to timestamp their work. If you need any further assurance that digital truth will become more and more important in the next few years, just take a minute and look up deep fake video.

Well, we’re beta-testers! This blog post could be one of the first articles certified by WordProof, but likely a few years from now every online news service will be using it. For the moment it is great to know that everything we write comes with it’s own blockchain certification.

Would you like to meet up with our experts to discuss your blockchain application and the world of possibility awaiting you as a Europechain partner?